Posted 7:00 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: The Conquest of Conquest

Every few days I come across something interesting enough to write about. But I don't have time then. By the time I have time to write, the event has become ancient history (2 days in normal time, 2 millennia in blog years). So that's why no blog.

To make up for the lack of Foto Friday last week, here's a three-fer: the George Rogers Clark Memorial:

George Rogers Clark Memorial
Vincennes, IN, June 2007

I took Niles here last summer, and he was mildly interested in this large memorial park, until he learned that Clark was celebrated for kicking British butt. Doh! Guess I forgot to mention that part.

Check out the inscription at the top:

You can only read part of it. The whole thing reads, "The Conquest of the West - George Rogers Clark and The Frontiersmen of the American Revolution."

You don't often see an uncritical, unabashed reference to conquest these days. The Memorial was dedicated in the benighted days of 1936, by the benighted FDR.

Be sure to check out the park's web site. Enjoy the nice pictures of the redbuds, then look inside the Memorial at the seven murals. I have pictures of them, but they're pretty crummy. My flash was not powerful enough, and I was unable to make the tourists go the hell away.

The murals are by an artist named Ezra Winter. Most of them are very colorful, but mural number 3 is very dull. Questioned about this, Winter explained that, hey, Vincennes is very dull in the winter (depicted in the mural), and he wanted to be accurate.

If you look at the first photo, above, you might see a chunk of stone near the riverfront, just in front of the Memorial. That's this:

Statue of Francis Vigo
Vincennes, IN
June 2007

Francis Vigo, honored in the names of counties and townships and countless businesses around Vincennes. On Memorial Day that year, the city woke to find that someone had broken Vigo's nose. It was still buzzing with indignation weeks later. A park ranger told us with satisfaction that the culprits -- teenagers -- had been identified and would be Dealt With.

I think Vigo looks like he's preparing to get out of his seat and give chase. "You damn kids BRING BACK MY NOSE!"

Visible behind Vigo is the Lincoln Memorial Bridge which carries the business loop of US Hwy 50 into Illinois. Supposedly this was the place where the young Abe Lincoln forded the Wabash to get to Illinois (which he had heard was calling itself the "Land of Lincoln", and he wanted to know what that was about).

Like Lincoln, Niles and I likewise crossed the river on foot, but we were sensible enough to use the bridge, so as not to get wet. I believe that's the only time I have crossed a state line on foot.

So, exciting, eh? Now, wasn't that worth the wait?

Labels: Foto Friday, Indiana

Posted 9:53 PM by Angie Schultz

Noontime in the Garden of White and Dark

If I weren't using the laptop, I'd know what this picture looks like. As it is, it changes every time I move my head. So it might suck. Deal.

Terry Hershey Park
Houston, December 2007

This is just a tree with some moss. I took a bunch of pictures in Hershey Park just before Christmas, using some filters I'd been acquiring over the fall. They didn't turn out as nicely as I'd hoped. According to my notes, this one was taken with a dark green X1 filter and a Nikon Soft 2. The X1 darkened the sky quite a bit but let the trunk and the leaves at the top shine bright white.

Houston doesn't boast a whole lot of stunning scenery. My present environs are a little different. I've been lugging my camera nearly everywhere recently; maybe in a few weeks I can post some local pictures.

Labels: Foto Friday, Texas

Posted 10:30 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: It's Baaaaack

Hi, I'm back. Didja miss me? No, huh?

Anyhow, here's a Foto Friday. If you didn't see it on Friday, it's because I forgot to remove the stealth pixel paint. Yeah.

Anyhow, here 'tis. I don't have a good idea of how it looks, compared to previous efforts, since I don't have the big Samsung monitor (which I used exclusively before) hooked up, and am using only the laptop screen. So I hope I haven't over-tweaked.

The Blue Mountains, Australia, July 2002

Here's an interactive web cam of the Blue Mountains, although I couldn't get it to work. And here are some more photographs. I am very generous in linking to this site, since his pictures are far better than mine (be sure and check out the other two Blue Mountains galleries there, as well as galleries of other places around Australia).

This was taken on my last full day in Australia. Due to incredible stupidity on my part, I didn't get around to seeing this particular sight until then. It was winter; I should've gone in spring and summer and fall, to see the changes. But I was more interested in sitting around and moping. (In my defense, I didn't have a car then.)

Now I live in a photo-rich environment, and I must guard against the inclination to mope.

The Blue Mountains are just west of Sydney. There's a bit of history here. The Blue Mountains supposedly get their name from the haze of eucalyptus oil droplets. However, some note that mountains (or anything else) at a distance tend to look blue and hazy (cf. the Blue Ridge Mountains, which contain negligible amounts of eucalyptus oil).

When I was a child I read this fairytale, in which a man goes to great lengths to find the Blue Mountains. The "Blue Mountains" sounded so beautiful and romantic, I wanted to find them too.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday